Bench to Bedside -- Discussion

1. Bench to Bedside -- Discussion Jim Herbsleb CMU jdh@cs.cmu.edu

2. Outline • Kudos • Pick a few nits • Concluding thoughts

3. Kudos • Selection of AIDS research as subject of collaboratory • Inherently multi-disciplinary (virologists, pathologists, immunologists, etc.) • Bridging communities (“bench to bedside”) • Speed is important • Systematic preparation • Collaboration readiness • Tool selection based on interviews -- address problems that are real to the participants • Training, infrastructure • Likely sped up adoption • Collection of both usage and outcome data

4. Benefits of Collaboratory • Clearly facilitated some existing collaborations • Apparently led to increase in cross-site publications • Sped up some tasks (e.g., developing protocol) • Mentoring junior faculty

5. Some Nits • Non-human primate researchers?? • I found the presentation of results rather confusing • Did increased number of collaborations come from recognizing need/opportunity more than availability of tools? • Some clear summary of before/after would be really helpful, e.g., • contingency table of sites by sites, counts of collaborations before, after • Statistical modeling to see if introduction of collaboratory introduces more cross-site collaborations • (may need to add in conference, workshop papers, etc, to get numbers up) • Relationship of collaboratory use to new cross-site collaborations • Comparison of cross-site collaboration with CFARs without Collaboratory?

6. Couple More Nits • Effect on clinicians? • How did multi-site collaboration on GLR CFAR happen without tools? • What were the problems, how were they solved or worked around? • How were later collaborations different? • Collaboration readiness -- what did the reported results actually mean? • There were 4 same-site, 4 cross-site, and many anticipated cross-site collaborations • If competitiveness/complementarity is so important, why doesn’t collaboration readiness focus on this?

7. Issues • Tool selection -- give participants exactly what they want? (fax, desktop video, coercive counseling for colleagues) • Do they know what will be useful? E.g., did they ask for web site with the specific functionality, e-mail distribution lists? Seem to have been used a lot. • Will they actually use what would actually be useful? (e.g., perception of “hallway conversation,” mixed record of chat, IM, MUD use)

8. Hypothesis -- distance matters less over time? (Early in relationship, early in work) • Group behavior changes greatly over time (e.g., “Time Matters,” Joe McGrath) • Nearly absolute barrier to initiating something • Early interactions create structure (e.g., identification of mutual interests, plans, awareness of style, expertise, etc.) that form framework for later communication • After FTF, other communication works better over distance • Software development -- early activities are the most collaborative • After some critical mass of development, open source becomes possible • Need collaboration tools to support some sort of life cycle? • How, in detail, did new collaborations progress in CFAR?

9. Understanding Dependencies in Work • Van de Ven, organizational assessments • Org theory -- information processing, certainty, stability, etc., influences how much communication is needed, how well other mechanisms (e.g., bureaucracy) work • Easy to identify “hard” dependencies, e.g., producer-consumer, shared resources • But how do you systematically identify and support “soft” dependencies? • E.g., A and B should really keep in touch on this issue • Would be potentially useful part of collaboration readiness